Blue Sky, Red Sea
by Master Maple
Summary: Sun's ready to hurl as he waits in the landing craft, Neptune beside him. He can see the fortifications in the distance, hear the chatter of machine-guns, the shouting, the noise of combat. Something's wrong. This isn't how it's supposed to go. For the r/RWBY August MonCon. Characters: Team SSSN Prompt: Beach. Inspired by Saving Private Ryan


_AN: So this is profoundly unusual and possibly the most intense thing I've ever written. I watched Saving Private Ryan for the first time the day the prompt was released, and I'm sure you can see how that influenced this. If you haven't got the stomach for a violent, messy piece about a violent, messy battle, pass this by. You've been warned._

* * *

Sun feels like he could puke his guts up. The cold salt spray soaks his uniform through, leaving him shivering against the soldiers packed tight in the landing craft. The blunt-bowed steel tub hurls itself against the furious tide, rocking up and down in a motion that sends his head spinning one way and his stomach spinning another. He manages to keep his breakfast down, just. Others are not so lucky. He suppresses a shudder of disgust as Neptune bends double and sends a stream of watery vomit all over his boots.

Ahead of them, through the dim fog, there are people waiting to kill him the second the protection of the ramp drops away. He does his best to put it out of his mind, but it lingers despite himself, so he decides instead to think of Blake. Far away, with her friends in the factory, packing ammunition for a war she doesn't believe in but feels bound to support by his participation. He looks down at the rifle in his hands and wonders if maybe it's loaded with a bullet that she made. He knows she'd find the thought of him killing with the work of her hands upsetting, but he can't help but hope that there's a little piece of _her_ in there. It would be something to believe in, some lucky talisman for a boy who's seen too much of how cruel the world can be to believe in God.

He pulls back the bolt, extracts a bullet from the chamber, sends it _clicking_ forward to load another one. He holds the sleek 303 cartridge in his hand, feels the cool brass roll across his palm, and decides that this will be _hers_. A charm to lead him through this storm of fire, because he's always been the lucky one but sometimes you've gotta put your faith in something. Even if it's just a false assurance based on odds even a gambler like Scarlet would never take. He presses the ammunition to his lips, takes a moment to read the serial number, breathes in the rifle-grease and pretends it's her perfume. He tucks it into his breast pocket.

Neptune retches out another stream of bile that trails off into a choking dry-heave. Sun puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder, and suddenly his old friend meets his eyes with a look of terror. "Sun." he says, reaching out to grab his shoulder in return. "Sun, I can't swim."

The blonde corporal sighs, glances down at his boots where the contents of Neptune's stomach are churning in a bilge of seawater and the vomit of other men who couldn't hold their rations. "'Course you can." He says, trying to keep his usual, light-hearted tone and ignore the spike of panic in his heart. "You passed Basic. We all did. You can swim just fine." Neptune shakes his head, runs a hand through his spiky hair, dyed blue on a bet when they were still training in Vale. "That's not true, and you know it. I still can't swim worth shit. I only passed because you stuffed my uniform with-" "Alright, alright." Sun interrupts, not wanting to remember the indignities that Neptune's 'perfectly reasonable phobia' had made them endure.

He realizes at this moment the lengths they all went to in order to reach this point together. How much effort Sun put in to dragging Neptune into a steel tub sailing across the Mistral Channel. His friend could _die._ Come to think of it, so could Sun. But he shakes off his fear as he realizes that Neptune's waiting for him to finish his thought.

"Look, you've never been good around water. But you've got me, and Sergeant Branwen, Lieutenant Oobleck, and the rest of the guys. I'll be right next to you, alright pal?" Neptune flinches as a large wave sends more water than usual raining down on them, but he manages to muster his courage. He still looks pale, drawn, green around the gills, but he tries his hand at keeping his usual confident tone of voice. "Um, yeah. Yeah, I got you. Just… Don't drop me, please. And if we get tossed around, _please_ help me stay in the boat." He nervously glances into the churning waves. "You don't… You don't think there's sharks, or anything like that here, do you?" Sun, in spite of his fear, snorts and rolls his eyes. "Beats the shit out of me how you even made it into the boat."

Neptune grumbles something unintelligible, then braces his hands on his knees and keeps his eyes glued to the floor, ready to hurl again. Sun sighs and takes a moment to look around the craft at the men of A Platoon, Sugar Company.

There's Ren, his eyes closed as he breathes deeply, putting himself someplace else, someplace where, so he says to Sun, things like pain and fear are abstracts, things he doesn't _feel_ so much as distantly register. He's an odd one, prefers books to people, just like Blake, but he's very defensive about certain stuff. He'll glare bloody murder at anyone who asks him about the pink apron in his backpack.

Lieutenant Oobleck is leaning against the hull next to the coxswain's pulpit, thumbing through one of the seemingly endless books in his bag. He speaks like an educated man in conversation, intense yet softly-spoken, filled with an enormous energy. He seems bound tight like a spring as he pauses, carefully dog-ears a page, then snaps the book closed and mutters something to the coxswain.

There's Scarlet, seemingly unaffected by the rocking of the vessel. He's got excellent sea legs, and he's a strong swimmer, despite being known among the platoon as a klutz. For him this war is personal. Almost every family member he had in Vale lost their home to the Atlesian "Blitz", and his cousin was killed in action with the Expeditionary Force during the retreat in '40 . He had never been very patriotic before, but he's fired up now. He glares fixedly at the horizon.

Sage is rooted to the spot, also looking green around the gills, fear in his eyes as he mutters a quiet prayer. He makes the sign of the cross, reaches down and checks the carbine that looks so small in his hands. He's an odd choice for a medic, tall and strong as an ox, but gentle as a lamb and just as trusting. He's got an extra bag of medical supplies slung across his chest, a smaller pouch with a eucharist emblazoned on it hanging from his hip. He's a combat medic, but he's already halfway through seminary school, and he had the Chaplain coach him in prayers for the dying, just in case. For all his faith and pleasantness, Sage can be awfully pragmatic about death.

Qrow stands up straighter and unscrews the cap on his flask, taking a swig. He turns to face the men, adjusting his helmet so it fits better on his mop of dark hair. "Two minutes!" he growls. "When it's time to hit the beach, don't stop, don't think, just _move_! Try and to the sea-wall as fast as you can, they'll have the beach pre-sighted so trying to hunker down there is a death-trap! Make sure you clear those foxholes as you go, I don't want a Spandau tearing my ass to shreds because you were too fucking stupid to sweep the beach properly! Got it?" "Yes, Sergeant Branwen!" they chorus, and Sun's conscious of the fact that he can dimly make out cliffs taking shape through the fog, the light of something burning brightly in the distance. Nan Green, that's where they're supposed to land. Omaha. The beach is called Omaha.

All of a sudden Neptune's shaking his shoulder, leaning in so close Sun can smell the foul odor of bile on his breath. "Sun, man, there's something else I need to tell you." " _What?_ " He snaps, wrinkling his nose. Neptune looks him solemnly in the eye, his fear diminished slightly. "My girl…" "What about her?" Sun replies, slightly curious. Neptune's never spoken much about Weiss, ignores the teasing and the dirty looks from the guys who think her name sounds a bit too much like a spy's for their liking. "Look, I promise I'll write her if you end up…" He can't bring himself to finish the thought, but Neptune's shaking his head empathically. "She wouldn't understand you. It's complicated." "My handwriting's not that bad." He hisses, but Neptune scowls and grips his shoulder more tightly. "No, you don't…" He sighs and nervously rubs the back of his neck. "Look, I wrote a letter for her. I wrote two, actually." He takes a crumpled piece of paper, carefully wrapped in waterproof plastic, and presses it into Sun's hand. "I don't trust the army to post it for me, y'know, stuff gets lost all the time. So if… If I don't make it off the beach, I want you to find her. The address is written on the letter. You've gotta give it to her, okay?"

Sun takes a deep breath, looks out at the cliffs looming closer. "Okay." he says, and pockets the creased parchment. "Let's not talk about this kind of stuff. You're gonna be fine, okay?"

"ONE MINUTE!" The coxswain bellows, and the fear returns again, the thunder of explosives ringing louder across the water. Sun, along with every other man in the compartment, hunkers down and grips his rifle in both hands. He thinks of the lucky bullet in his pocket, turns and blows a kiss to a girl with dark hair and a lot of strong opinions half a world away.

Sun reaches out, takes hold of Neptune as the fog lifts away and they see the wicked beach that awaits them, landing craft full of wounded and dying, one off to their right blazing merrily as screaming soldiers fling themselves into the sea. He pretends not to notice Neptune retching again. They sway together, gripping their rifles, leaning on the men beside them, huddled like frightened mice.

They hear the sound of the air over their heads tearing itself apart as a craft a few feet to their right is blown to bits in a geyser of water. Something wrapped in tattered reddish-green lands amongst the men with a thump. "Oh God" Sun hears someone mutter, and soon some of the men are throwing up again.

Sergeant Branwen raises his head and cautiously peers over the top. He turns to the coxswain and gestures furiously to the right. Sun can barely make out him growling "Too far, too far" over the crackle of gunfire. Sun turns to see the coxswain and instead his eyes meet Sage's. The medic gives him a reassuring smile, hefts his carbine. Sun replies with a thumb's up, sees the smile drop away the moment Sage thinks he's not looking. He's terrified. They're all terrified.

"Look alive! Thirty seconds!" Branwen shouts, gripping his Thompson white-knuckled. Sun tries to breathe, tries to still the heart pounding in his chest, and right then, with the chatter of machine-guns growing louder in his ears and the beach only a few hundred yards away, all he wants is for the ramp to go down so he can get out of this suffocating metal casket and _breathe_. Even a bullet would be better than having to wait here, ready to puke because it's better than screaming from fear. An electric current passes through the landing craft. Seconds stretch into hours, the seasickness, the shellfire, the suffocating closeness, the terrified anticipation turned into agony beyond description.

A jarring _crunch,_ men sent toppling as the craft suddenly tipped up onto the beach. Oobleck is bellowing with all the force he can muster. "KEEP MOVING, GENTLEMEN! I'LL MEET YOU AT THE SEAWALL!" The ramp drops, and there comes a noise like someone ripping a thousand sheets of paper next to Sun's ear. A bright pink cloud puffs up ahead of him as the steel drops away and reveals hundreds of yards of open sand studded with anti-tank traps and littered with long canvas bundles, some new booby trap maybe. Ahead of them the cliffs are lit up like a Christmas tree, bunkers spewing lead at them while mortars howl and sent geysers of pink-tinged sand into the air. Their landing craft has hit the beach at the intersection between two pillboxes' fields of fire.

Sun pushes forward, but the man in front of him refuses to move and Sun cusses and raps the back of his skull to get him to focus. It's only then that his head lolls forward and Sun sees the hole in his steel helmet. Blood has stained the bilge along with the bile and the seawater, mingling in a sickly, overpowering stench. Someone's pissed themselves. "Over the side!" Branwen bellows, hauling the Lieutenant after him, and soon his cry is taken up by the rest of the platoon.

"Over the side! Get over the fuckin' side! Follow the Lieutenant!" Sun starts to scramble up over the railing, and he's halfway up before he remembers and turns to Neptune, who's hunkering pale-faced behind the jumble of corpses at the ramp. "Come on, buddy." Sun waves him over. Scarlet's already gone over the side, but Sage is still there, shaking his head as he closes the eyes of the platoon radioman. "Sage! Sage, give me a hand with Neptune!" The medic lumbers over, helps to boost their blue-haired comrade up so Sun has his arm firmly around Neptune's waist. "Let's go, buddy! You can do it!" Neptune's wild-eyed with terror. He's about to say something when Sun feels a mighty fist slam into his shoulder and send him tumbling over the railing with his friend in tow.

Freezing. The cold makes him gasp as he flounders in the tide, fighting against the weight of his pack. Dark. Murky. The salt stings his eyes, makes his shoulder hurt like fire, but dimly he can make out other men in the ocean, some fighting like him, some simply lying still as the water around them swirls crimson. Trails of bubbles signify the bullets hissing through water, dyeing the ocean red wherever they find a mark. A young man drifts past Sun's view, his eyes showing naked terror as the weight of the gear caught in his chest webbing drags him into the dark. Good thing Sun can swim. Wait. _Neptune_. Sun squeezes tightly, still feels his friend clenching tightly to his wrist. He kicks and struggles, a trail of bubbles rising from his mouth. His head starts to ache. The weight is too much for both of them. Sun feels his rifle dragging him down, flings it away. Now he can rise slowly, now the water is getting lighter. The cold leaches the pain from his shoulder. His vision starts to throb darkly at the edges as his lungs scream for air. _So close_. He's almost at the surface, Neptune too, but it's too much and body wins out over mind and he takes a great, gulping gasp of seawater.

It burns as it trickles down his throat, and it overpowers his tongue with the taste of salt and a heavy, coppery tang that makes him light-headed and dizzy. He feels the air on his face, blind and choking, tries to suck down a lungful of air but simply sputters and gags. His hand sinks into something soft and Sun grabs it like a lifeline, tries to rub the water from his eyes and realizes that in one hand there is emptiness, that his friend has slipped away, and in the other there is a boy no older than him whose back has been almost completely blown out, bobbing in the water. His nails dig into soft flesh and as Sun staggers into a place where it's shallow enough to stand he drops to his knees and vomits. A stream of bloody saltwater trickles down his front.

He takes a painful gulp of air and looks around for a shock of blue hair, a body flailing in the water. He stands, about to stagger back into the rolling surf and dive, hoping against hope that Neptune is still holding his breath, but he feels an angry, waspish buzzing in his ear and he is flung to the ground as a mortar shell slams into the beach nearby.

He rolls through the clinging sand until he is moving on his hands and knees across towards an anti-tank obstacle, a bundle of steel beams welded together. His ears pop as the water streams out of them and suddenly he is in the midst of a thunderous noise, the loud rattle of machine-guns, the screams of the wounded, the shriek of mortars and artillery. The grit is caked on him, he can feel it between his teeth, on his tongue. He reaches the tank trap and hunkers down behind it, bullets whipping over his head.

He is surrounded by a mob of fellow soldiers, he looks at the unit flashes on their helmets and doesn't recognize half of them. Finally he sees a unit flash he recognizes, sees a boy with disheveled blonde hair hunkering down with a Bangalore torpedo cradled in his arms.

"Jaune!" he shouts, crawling over to him. "Jaune, what's going on!" The soldier turns to him, blue eyes wide with fear. He points towards the seawall. "I'm hunkered down here with some guys from my platoon! Brawnz and Cardin tried leading some guys up the beach a few minutes ago!" Sun swears and ducks as a bullet glances off the metal near his head. "Did they make it?"

Arc shakes his head. "Brawnz, Cardin, Russel and Porfirio disappeared into the smoke! Sky was nearly cut in half by an MG! Roy's wounded, he's lying near a shell-hole about 50 yards further up!" Sun cautiously peeks out and dimly recognizes a thrashing figure sprawled in the sand. "What about the others from your platoon?"

Jaune shrugs. "May caught a round going down the ramp of our landing craft! I thought I saw her washed up on the shoreline coming in, I'm not sure! Dove's all over the beach, what's left of him! A mortar blew him half to hell!" All Sun can do is nod and dig himself in deeper. He looks around for Neptune, Scarlett, _anyone_ he recognizes.

"Fuck!" he shouts. "Where did everybody else go?"

* * *

In training, Scarlett had dashed through the surf like a Vytal Festival sprinter, but all he can manage now is a slow, lethal slog through heaving waves up to his neck. He glances around, already panting like he's run a mile, trying desperately to move faster as the cold water chills him to the bone.

" _Come on, come on_ " he gasps, staggering drunkenly until the tide is down to his chest and he starts to move just a little faster but it's not enough, not nearly enough, and suddenly he's hearing desperate cries and something whipping into the water and he turns to see the men to his right scream and tumble like sheaves of wheat as a trail of dots along the water marks the burst of fire that killed them. He sees it draw nearer and nearer, tries futilely to stagger forward and feels the strength go out of him, slumps forward into the ocean.

The devilish chattering rings louder in his ears and he flinches as it sweeps to him and… Passes him by. He looks up and sees that the burst has just missed him, that the soldiers to his left have also been swept by the merciless hail and now he's alone, staggering through the surf. He gasps, his every muscle burning, limps to the shallows, collapses exhausted behind a beach obstacle.

There are others lying nearby him, but from their awful, contorted stillness he knows they're dead. Here, too, he is alone. He raises himself up onto his hands and knees and looks towards the safety of the shingles, sees the three hundred yards of pockmarked sand, littered with far more dead and dying, occasionally erupting into great geysers where the mortars tear earth and flesh asunder with their power.

Three hundred yards. He ran three times that every morning just last week. As he scrambles to his feet and begins his lonely, desperate sprint, with every fiber of his body screaming in protest, he feels that this little slice of hell is 300 miles broad instead.

* * *

 _They can't stay here,_ Sun thinks to himself. The beach has been pre-sighted, they'll be torn apart eventually for sure. He says as much to Jaune. "Well what do you suggest we do?" he shouts back. "Those machine guns will rip us to shreds in the open!"

"We have to try!" Sun replies. "If we stay here, we're all dead! We'll go cover to cover to the crater near Roy, rally there and then sprint the rest of the way!Tell everyone around you to follow me!" Jaune reluctantly nods a reply and turns to those around him, Sun takes a deep breath and prepares to run. He reaches down, feels the bullet still in his breast pocket, rolls it between his fingers through the fabric.

He had no letter for her, unlike Neptune. There wasn't time, and he could never think of the right words to say. He feels a pang of guilt that if he dies today, she might think he didn't care enough to write her a letter. That he wasn't thinking of her, and all she'll have left of him is a bullet left in his personal effects. He decides that he'll just have to stay alive. He can't stand it when she's mad at him.

He leaps to his feet, his heart lodged soundly in his throat, but he manages to croak out " _Go! Go! Go!"_ as he begins his near-suicidal sprint. _"To the crater!"_ someone behind him yells, and after that the shouts and screams fade and all he can feel is his pulse pounding in his ears, his boots sinking into the soft sand, the way his shoulder burns as he staggers across the beach.

He's nearing the shell-hole, conscious now of the bullets ripping past him, the pounding of the mortars, and suddenly there comes an unearthly howling and he is knocked flat by an explosion that dwarfs even the mortar rounds. He looks behind him and sees the place where he took cover moments ago is now a smoking crater strewn with dead and dying.

" _Shit! Artillery!"_ someone hollers. _"Artillery, clear the beach, get to the shingle!"_ Sun waves the others forward as he crawls the last few yards to the crater. " _C'mon, move! Move it!"_ He starts to slide down the side of the shell-hole, then remembers Roy. He crawls back out of the crater, seizes the wounded man by the arm, and drags him into cover.

He turns as others join him. Arc has made it, still holding his Bangalore, as have a soldier with a shock of pink in his hair and a man with a second Bangalore and a strip of yellow cloth tied around his waist. Two other soldiers didn't make it, lying dead from the artillery or the machine-gun fire. Sun remembers the wounded man and looks down at Roy with a sinking feeling in his gut. The man's green eyes roll wide with terror, but their light grows dimmer. The front of his uniform is soaked in blood from shoulder to hip, and when he coughs and gasps for air it leaves a splash of bright red around his mouth. "He's hit bad!" Sun shouts. "Arc, get me some morphine! We'll get him to the shingle!"

The pink-haired soldier speaks up. "They told us to leave the wounded for the medics! We have to keep moving!" Arc passes him a syringe. Roy groans as the needle is jabbed into his thigh. "The medics won't get to him in time! They're scattered all over the beach! We can carry him with us!" He retorts. The pink-haired one- Nadir, Sun remembers now- shakes his head empathetically. He points to the pillboxes still raking the beach with fire. "If we want to get off this beach we have to move fast! We can't afford to slow down for him! That's the way it's gotta be!"

Sun looks at the others, sees the look of pained resignation on Arc's face, the way the one with the yellow sash nods grimly. He knows what has to be done. But he can't help it. "Fuck it. I'll carry him." He says, wincing at the way the new weight on his shoulder makes it flare up again as he heaves Roy across his shoulders in a fireman's carry. Arc speaks up. "You're crazy, that's not-"

Too late. Sun's already up on his feet, running hard for the cliffs. He waves the others onward. "Follow me!" he roars, and he hears Arc yell _something_ in response but he can't quite tell what because all he can hear is Roy gasping in pain in tandem with the pounding of Sun's pulse and his panting as he sprints towards safety.

He can tell how Roy's weight makes a difference, how his feet sink deeper into the soft sand, how the strain makes him short of breath and crushes him when combined with the weight of his pack. _Come on, come on_. He's running flat out but the shingle is so far away, so much further than the shell-hole was, and he can see the machine-guns flashing in the bunkers, watches them scythe along the beach, watches the man with the yellow sash stumble and fall as a spray of bullets nearly tears him in half.

His breathing is more labored. His lungs feel like he swallowed fire. His legs start to go numb. He runs past a screaming wounded man who reaches out to him. Sun feels his hand brush against his boot, hears a snatch of his screaming amid the clatter of machineguns.

" _Wait! Please! 'Lina! 'Lina, where are you?"_ He can't stop, though he deeply wants to, and as his body grows tired and his footsteps more leaden, as the infernal shriek and rattle grows louder in his ears with the pounding of his pulse Sun wishes that he'd picked up a prayer or two from Sage.

* * *

" _For in the hour of my passing, take me into thy hand, O Lord_ , _that through You we may achieve immortality. Raise me up as a paragon of virtue in Your glory. At thy side, one with thee, infinite in distance and unbound by death. Release my Soul, O Lord, and by thy shoulder, protect me."_

The soldier parrots Sage's words through blood-soaked lips, and a look of calm comes over his face as he lies back on the sand. Sage gives him his best attempt at a reassuring smile and a quick jab of morphine to ease his passage. He bows his head respectfully, mutters a few words under his breath, then moves on to the next one.

This one's young, and a woman too, which is not unheard of but nonetheless unusual. Her bright shock of green hair is coated with grit, the streaks of war-paint under her eyes almost obliterated by grime and blood. She's caught shrapnel to her gut, and although she's doing her best not to scream her chest heaves as her agonized panting builds to a fever pitch and tapers off. Sage takes her hand, grabs another vial of morphine. He's running low. Perhaps he should save some to ease the passage of the dying instead. He places the morphine back in his pocket, tries to speak words of comfort as he pulls out his surgeon's tweezers and hunts for the shrapnel. The wound looks even worse now that it's in the open, and despite his attempts to comfort her pain still wracks the poor girl.

He hears a howling and quickly crouches low over her to shield her from the shrapnel and shock of a mortar round landing close by. He attempts to straighten up and continue but another round sends him crouching back down, and another after that. In his head he times the seconds between impacts. Three seconds is the margin between each shell and he resolves to simply stay where he is and keep working hunched over.

He can hear the young lady whimpering in pain as he keeps at it, slowly picks out the metal and does his best to bind up the wound. She howls when he trickles the disinfectant in but her cries taper off quickly as he whispers comforting words.

Suddenly, he feels a hand clutching at his shoulder and he turns to see Battalion Surgeon Goodwitch. She glances down at the gaping wound, appraises it with a practiced eye. Shakes her head. "She's bleeding out, they all are. Move on to someone you can help, leave these ones for the medics in the second wave."

They'll be dead before the second wave arrives, or so far gone by then it won't matter. They both know that. He looks down at the agonized face of his patient as she gasps for air. For a moment, words of prayer or comfort fail him.

"I'm sorry" he mutters, and packs up his medical kit, slings his carbine over his shoulder. Goodwitch is already looking up the beach, towards the safety of the sand berms. "They're gathering wounded at the shingle. Follow me, let's get over there and see what we can do." Without a backward glance, she's moving. Sage follows behind her, his stomach churning at the thought of all the suffering and pain behind him that he has left untreated. All those souls with no one to say goodbye to, no one to ease their passage. No lives he might have saved.

He takes a deep breath and begins to speak.

"Be thou not far from me, O Lord…"

* * *

" _Go. Go, GO!"_ Sun's not sure where he finds the energy to yell with his throat raw and hoarse, but he nonetheless urges them on, to move faster, and even though the weight of his kit drags him down some desperate, animal panic drives him onwards. He stumbles, drunk with fatigue, hearing Roy's harsh panting as he writhes and squirms. The others have pulled ahead now, Arc taking the lead with Nadir just behind him.

" _Move… C'mon, move."_ He's gasping for breath, just a few more feet to the wall, and he can see Sergeant Branwen huddled down with some of the others, and as he expends the last of his energy he hears that devilish tearing-paper sound and something slices into his ribs, spins him round so that he flops down with a twirl face-first into the dunes. He raises his head, spits the grit out of his mouth and tries to rub it from his eyes, sets Roy down in the sand somewhat the worse for wear.

"You gutsy son of a bitch." Jaune hisses. "Have you got a thing for medals, or something? Because I guarantee the folks back home would rather have you come back alive than a dead hero." Sun pauses at that. Reaches down and pulls out the bullet from his breast-pocket, feels the weight of it in his hand, thinks of a different time, a different beach, a lifetime ago and half a world away.

* * *

" _You're going, aren't you." Her stare accusatory, guarded… Concerned? A stupid, selfish, giddy part of him hopes that she is upset with him because she's afraid for him. But he doubts it. Blake's not afraid of much. He sighs, reaches for her. "Blake, please-"_

" _Save it." She turns out to face the calm, deep blue sea, the sand as white as sugar and soft as silk, the sunset painting the sky a beautiful red. "Why do you want to go off and fight?" "Well…" He pauses, searching for the right words, to convince her, try to make her understand. "Blake, you've heard what they're doing over there. Lynch mobs. Occupying innocent countries. Scarlett told me yesterday that they'd taken away his whole extended family. Everyone but his brother, his mom and his dad, gone with no trace. It's not_ _ **right**_ _."_

" _I know. But it's not a game, killing. It's never as easy as they make it sound." She knows far more about that than he does. She fled to Vacuo as a refugee when she was young, running away from an abusive spouse and the war that took her parents. She's seen a lot of death, and he can see that weight in her eyes when she looks at him._

 _Sun's helpless under her gaze. His arguments crumble. "I know." He mumbles. "I'm not going away because I think it's some_ _ **game**_ _. I might not be worth a whole lot right now, but I'm not stupid. It's just…_ _ **It's not right**_ _." He's reduced to parroting old arguments, full of self-consciousness about how crude his reasons must sound. But working at a factory from morning to night six days a week doesn't give you fancy words or skills in public speaking. Not like her, the protester, the rebel, devouring books just as fast as he can buy them from Tukson's second-hand place for her birthday and the holidays. Articulate and well-educated, cleverer and more beautiful than he deserves. He fights to stay on track. He has to convince her. This is important._

" _Look, Blake, if you want the truth, yes, I'm going because everyone else is going. But it's more than that. Scarlett just got word the other day that his brother was killed in Mistral. And Sage… The letters he's getting from his grandfather, about what they're doing over there…" He musters up the courage to look her in the eyes and hold his ground. "You fight for what matters to you. You fight for what matters to you, and I want to do the same. Is that so wrong?"_

 _She sighs, lowers her head, when she speaks she sounds defeated. "Okay." She says, and Sun tries to smile, puts his arm around her in thanks. She says nothing. Just rests her head on his shoulder. Neither of them are willing to move, to speak, to break the moment._

 _Finally, she turns to him with a new light in her eyes. "Sun." "Yeah?" He swallows nervously. "Sun, you'll come back, won't you?" He looks down at his lap, runs a hand through his hair. "Um… Yeah. Yeah, I think I will." She frowns in earnest. Her tone changes to iron as she seizes him tightly. "_ _ **You'll come back.**_ _" she orders, and he's helpless to do anything but agree. "Okay." He says, and pulls her closer._ _It's the answer she believes in, and so he believes in it too. She's so quiet, and shy, but she's passionate about what she believes in in a way that electrifies him. She's a real firebrand, deep down._

 _That's what he loves about her._

 _Calm moonlight on blue water. The heat of her pressed against him. The cool ocean gently tugging at the sand beneath his feet. The waves are the only sound, their crash and rumble deep and soothing._

 _ **Snap. Snap-snap-snap.**_

"-the _fuck_ is wrong with you, Private Wukong!"

Bullets zip over Sun's head and he buries himself deeper into the dune, turns to see Qrow glaring at him with his trademark don't-piss-me-off look. He raises a hand in greeting and slips the bullet back into his breast pocket. "Just thinking, Sergeant Branwen!" he replies, taking stock of the situation. Sun swears he can see Qrow's eye twitching.

"THINKING? WHO THE _FUCK_ HAS TIME FOR THINKING? Now _get your head on straight!_ Arc's laying a Bangalore and Lieutenant Oobleck's bringing more up to us, so shake a leg and find yourself a gun!" He waves to the others. "Same goes for you! GATHER WEAPONS AND AMMO, NOW!" They scatter, crawling to the dead and wounded and stripping them of their gear. Sun finds a dead sergeant close by with a shotgun slung over his shoulder, still in its waterproofing. He pries it away from the corpse, grabs a bandolier of shells and staggers back towards Qrow.

"I've got a weapon, Sarge!" Qrow rolls his eyes. "Good, keep it up and the Lieutenant will give you a fucking medal! Help me with this Bangalore!" Sun helps him push the explosives-packed pipe into the tangle of wire, and together they hastily bury it in the sand. "Sarge, have you seen Sage, Scarlett or Neptune?" Qrow nods. "Sage is helping Surgeon Goodwitch with the wounded further down the beach. Not sure about David or Vasilias."

Almost right on cue, a lone figure clutching a light machine gun comes sprinting pell-mell towards them. He stumbles and Sun breathes in sharply as his helmet falls to reveal a shock of red hair. He's moving flat-out and as a familiar face resolves into view Scarlett slides the last few feet home like a baseball player. Sun claps him heartily on the back. "Scarlett, budy, you're alright!" The sprinter can only manage a grin as he digs his weapon's bipod into the sand.

"S…Sergeant Branwen…" he pants, but Qrow sharply tells him to catch his breath first. "What's going on, Private David?" Scarlett breathes deeply, wipes some of the sand from his eyes. "Sergeant, there's not many left on the beach. Lark, Russel and Sky are all dead. Bolin's down, as are Nolan and Reese." "What about Sage?" Sun says. "What about Neptune, did you see him?"

"There's Sage now, with Oobleck and Goodwitch!" Sun whirls around to see the Lieutenant cradling a Bangalore as he sprints across the beach with Sage and Goodwitch in tow. They hurl themselves to the ground and Sun gives Sage a pat on the back as he burrows in to the dune along with them.

"Alright!" Oobleck shouts, gesturing for their attention. "Unpack your weapons while we lay these bangalores! We'll make our way up the path where they've got a system of trenches connecting their bunkers! Move from crater to crater, try and find a defilade to take cover in whenever possible. Private David, Private Winchester, provide covering fire while we move up the slope! Make sure the Atlesians keep their heads down!" "Yes sir!" Sun replies, ripping the covering off of the shotgun and quickly testing the action. He chambers a round and hunkers down as Branwen, Arc and Oobleck light the fuses.

" _Fire in the hole! Clear the shingles!"_ Sun rolls away and buries his face in the sand as the fuse burns down and with a thunderous _bang_ the torpedoes detonate. He feels sand and small bits of shrapnel rain down on him, clattering against his helmet, and as the impacts fade away he raises his head and rolls over the sand berm. A burst of fire rattles over his head and he can hear Scarlett's gun chattering in reply. Branwen is gamely returning fire with his carbine and Oobleck's submachinegun stutters as they spray the Atlesian positions with lead. Once more he's moving, a bloody hike up the narrow path that leads to the top of the bluffs, and even as he feels the distance is infinite he's reaching the top with Nadir right in front of him. The soldier clears the top of the ridge and almost immediately he's flung backwards with a puff of bright red from his skull. Sun flings himself flat and crawls into a shallow ditch, rifle shots zipping overhead. He pops up long enough to fire off a shell at the ditch opposite where the Atlesians are dug in, crawling forward until the almost tumbles into the Atlesian trenches.

He pumps the shotgun and rolls into the trench, coming up on one knee just as a cluster of Atlesians round the corner. He doesn't even get a shot off before Lieutenant Oobleck's gun coughs out a spray of bullets that sends the knot of grey clad soldiers tumbling. Sun starts to work his way further down the trench when there's a muffled _thump_ as a pineapple grenade lands at his feet. He hastily scrambles to grab it and desperately fling it back out, ducking as it goes off in mid-air and sends hot shrapnel whirling past him.

There are more explosions and clouds of smoke, more grenades, and he realizes that if he doesn't get out of the trench he's in danger of being blown to bits by his own side, so he leaps up and hauls his way out into the open, crawling carefully on his belly as he links up with the rest of his unit and heads towards the deadly bunker.

As they approach the steel door of the pillbox opens and the gun crew comes pouring out, rifles and machine-guns at the ready, but Sun hardly even registers the color of their uniforms before he's firing shell after shell, holding down the trigger and just firing each shot the instant it's chambered until his gun clicks empty and there's nothing left of the gun crew but tattered, bloody rags.

And just like that it's silent, save for the distant pattering of firefights further down the beach, and the sudden anticlimax leaves him breathless, clenching the shotgun until his knuckles are white as he stumbles over to the cliffside and sits, letting his boots dangle over the edge as he stares out at the sea. Sage and Scarlett join him without a word.

Sun runs through the events of the day in his mind's eye; fighting through the trenches, his desperate sprint across the sand with Roy on his back, the terror of the landing craft, fighting to stay afloat with the weight of his gear and his rifle with Neptune clinging to his arm-

Neptune.

"Guys" he says, feeling a rush of desperation "guys, are you sure you didn't see Neptune? We were in the water, I was helping him get to shore, and he just slipped out of my hand-" the thought is harsh and unspoken as it occurs to all three of them. Naptune is a terrible swimmer. Under the weight of his gear, alone, terrified of drowning, his odds are slim in the extreme.

Sun feels the talisman in his breast pocket, the bullet, _Blake's_ bullet, feels that it carried him through. Carried _all_ of them through. He's always been lucky. So has Neptune.

He gets to his feet.

"We should go look, down on the beach. The battle's almost over. Maybe he paddled to shore. Maybe he found some floating debris to help take him in. Maybe some landing craft picked him up and he's back on a hospital ship. Maybe the ocean took one look at that stupid blue hair of his and spat him back out."

Blake believed it. Sun will too. Neptune _will_ come back alive. He hasn't got much to hold onto, on this desolate beach, alone except for his friends. But her word is sounding like something he can afford to believe in. He's not like Sage. He never had much time for God.

Sun helps Sage stand, Scarlett manages to rise on his own. They shoulder their weapons, look down towards those three hundred yards of hell.

"Let's go." He says.

Harsh sunlight on water turned crimson with slaughter. The burning agony of his wounds. The feel of the blood-soaked sand tugging at his boots. The waves are the only sound he can hear, their crash and rumble cold and desolate.

* * *

 _AN:_

 _Well, it's done. Finally. The weirdest mash-up/AU I have ever done. This is going to seem especially excessive since I originally intended it to counterbalance the tide of fluff I presumed would spring from such a sunny (if you'll pardon the pun) prompt. Unfortunately, such a flood never materialized._

 _A few quick notes for clarity's sake:_

 _The characters mentioned are all from teams in the Vytal Festival:_

 _ABRN:_

 _Bolin, Reese, Nadir, in addition to Arslan who was on the beach in canon but does not appear here._

 _Bolin, Reese, KIA_

 _Arslan MIA_

 _Nadir WIA_

 _BRNZ:_

 _Brawnz, Roy, Nolan (Porfirio), May_

 _Nolan, May KIA_

 _Roy WIA_

 _Brawnz alive and fit for further action_

 _CRDL:_

 _Cardin (Winchester), Russel (Thrush) Dove and Sky_

 _Dove, Russel, Sky KIA_

 _Cardin alive, unfit for further action (battle fatigue)_

 _NDGO (not shown, on the beach):_

 _Nebula, Dew, Gwen, Octavia_

 _WIA: Dew_

 _Nebula, Gwen, Octavia alive and fit for further action._

 _Yes, this whole thing is insanely in-depth. I did a lot of research about the actual D-Day Landings for this, to the extent that it consumed my life for almost a month. The beach Sun and Co are landing on is heavily based on Omaha, one of the two American landing zones, as seen in Saving Private Ryan (which provided the inspiration for all this). Everything from the fate of characters we don't see like Pyrrha, Ruby and Yang to the weapons each character has were planned out to try and stay as true to the historical angle as possible while throwing in some nods to the show (for instance, Sun picking up a shotgun is a nod to Ruyi-Bang and Jingu-Bang)._

 _FYI: Scarlett and Cardin are wielding weapons based on the Browning Automatic Rifle. Oobleck has an equivalent of a Thompson sub-machine gun. Qrow and Sage both wield RWBY versions of the M14 Carbine while all others begin as riflemen wielding equivalents of the M1 Garand._

 _Isn't this all a bit much? Well, yes, it is. I threw a lot of time and effort at this, to the extent that I watched and read nothing that wasn't related to WW2 and the Normandy Landings in particular for almost a month. And now we have this. It's big and violent and bloody and bizarre and I'm going to miss it. I quite enjoyed writing it, to be frank._

 _I hope you enjoy reading it too. As always, let me know what you think._

 _Maple_


End file.
